Sausages have been traditionally made by filling the natural intestines of sheep and other animals with a sausage product whereupon the filled natural casing was formed into links for cooking. At more modern times, sausages are predominantly made by introducing an emulsion into an artificial casing, which in cases the sausage material through linking and preliminary cooking. Machines for making sausages with artificial casings have a high volume capability (up to 30,000 sausages per hour). Efforts have been made to use these high speed machines with natural casings. However, because of the nature of the natural casings, including the relatively shorter and variable length and non uniform diameter, modern sausage encasing machines have not achieved the volume and capacity with natural casings as they do with artificial casings.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a machine for encasing sausages that improves upon the state of the art.
A further object of this invention is to provide a sausage encasing machine that is vertically aligned to allow gravity to enhance the movement of the casing.
Yet a further object of this invention is to reduce bunching of the casings.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.